big issues

Balthazar Bourbon, a distant descendant of European royalty, had rarely traveled far from his claustrophobic Indian town. Then one day, he was told he was the direct heir to the now defunct French throne. That's when his problems started read more

As a young soldier in Vietnam, Cecil Ison saw something, something so horrific that he buried the memory of it for thirty years and swore he’d never allow it to surface again. Then, on March 20, 2003—the day after we started bombing Iraq—the past leapt up and grabbed him read more

Twenty-two years after being sent to prison for an unspeakable crime he did not commit, Calvin Willis walked out a free man, the 138th American exonerated by DNA evidence. He has won his freedom, yes, but how does a falsely accused man reclaim his life? read more

Chased from their country by the ever growing chaos of war, more than a million Iraqi refugees have fled to Syria, where they live in limbo, waiting for a rescue that will likely never come. They cannot work legally, their money is dwindling, and no other country will take them. But almost all of them agree on one thing: They will never come home read more

As we celebrate fifty years of GQ, we look back at the most compelling journalism the magazine has published. In 1994, James Ellroy, America's greatest living crime novelist, gave us this searing account of how—and why—he finally dared reopen the case of his mother's unsolved murder read more

Why do we even have coal mines? That question is what led Jeanne Marie Laskas to spend a few weeks 500 feet belowground, getting to know the men behind the invisible economy this country couldn't live without read more

Falling in love across enemy lines: It sounds like something out of a fairy tale. But nothing in war is simple. As this American soldier and his Iraqi wife found out, love in a war zone is difficult, it’s dangerous, and it really pisses off the brass read more

Sean Flynn explores the labyrinth of Philippine sex clubs—a paradise for adventurers where the girls are plentiful, cheap, and have no other choice. The first installment of a three-part investigation into the global sex trade read more